1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the art of exposing and developing an electronically recorded image on photosensitive material from electronic image data generated by decomposing an image into a number of dots.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been proposed a photographic processing apparatus including a film image exposing unit for exposing a film image (i.e. an analog image) on photosensitive material and an electronic image exposing unit for exposing an electronically recorded image (`electronic image` hereinafter) of characters, CG or the like (i.e. a digital image) on photosensitive material by using e.g. a flat CRT or FOT (fiber optical tube), thus the apparatus being capable of providing either separate prints respectively of the film image and the digital image or a composite print of the film and digital images.
With such `hybrid` or `dual` type photographic processing apparatus capable of processing both a film image and an electronic image as described above, the components of the film image exposing unit and those of the electronic image exposing unit both need to be disposed in the course of a photosensitive material transport line extending from a photosensitive material supplying unit to a developing unit, so that the entire apparatus tends to be significantly large in size. Moreover, at present, the electronic image exposing unit is far less frequently used than the film image exposing unit. Still, the photosensitive material to be processed by the film image exposing unit alone needs to go all the way through the portion of the transport line extended for the electronic image exposing unit. This is inefficient.
While demand for the electronic image printing is expected to increase in future, it still will be a significant economic burden to replace the existing conventional film image processing apparatus by the dual type apparatus as described above.
In addition to the economic disadvantage as above, the co-existence of the film image exposing unit and the electronic image exposing unit within a common housing of the apparatus may lead also to a technical difficulty, as this necessitates effective protection of the former unit against heat and/or light discharged from the latter unit and vice versa.